Book Review: Guerrilla Marketing (4th Edition)

Book: Guerrilla Marketing
Author: Jay Conrad Levinson

So after all this time, finally I'm doing another book review. I decided to read this book because one of my teachers recommended it.  It took me quite a while to read; it's a long book with teeny tiny type in it. But that won't factor into the review. I will be reviewing on context, not on how long it took me to read the book- which was a while.

If you are into advertising and you want a job in advertising, or already have a career in advertising, this book is probably not for you (unless you are on the account side). This is more of a marketing book. That's why it says marketing in the title. But, if you have a small business, this book is definitely for you. It has all the tools you need to get your small business marketing plan off the ground.

One thing I didn't like about this book was the lack of real life examples. The author does use some, but he doesn't give any names of companies or people. I know he does this for anonymity, but I felt that I could not connect to anything in the book; it all seemed distant. I wish there were more real life examples. Th best ones that Levinson did put in were about his own experiences. Those felt more real to me than any of the other examples he put in, probably because he mixed in some fake examples with some real life ones.

I know I said that I wasn't going to talk about this, but some of the chapters were ridiculously long. They went on forever. I know the author was trying to be thorough, and he did a really good job of covering all his bases, but really, some chapters were 60-odd pages long. When a book has really long chapters, it feels like it takes even longer to read.

I felt that since I'm an advertising student, many of the chapters did not apply to me. Although the E-Media Marketing and Human Media Marketing chapters were particularly enlightening to me. In fact, the E-Media Marketing chapter actually helped me with this blog!

Some of the content was definitely good and worth the read. However, if you're planning on going creative in the advertising business, I'm really not sure that this book is for you. As I said before, it is more of a marketing book. Although there are some good tips about marketing yourself in this book, there are other, more advertising specific books that would probably help you more. But, if you have a small business, you should read this book because it doesn't tell you to go and buy expensive advertising; it tells you to create a long term plan for your business.

I'm not sure what else to say on that topic. I made my recommendations and I'm going to stick with them. It was worth reading, even if I don't feel that would help me. Hopefully, this book is right for you.

That's all for now.

Book Review: Unleashing The Ideavirus

Book: Unleashing The Ideavirus
Author: Seth Godin

Unleashing The Ideavirus is not a new book. In fact, its over 10 years old. But, a lot of the information in it is still relevant today because of how important the Internet is to peoples' lives.

The book consists of four sections: Why Ideas Matter, How To Unleash An Ideavirus, The Ideavirus Formula, and Case Studies and Riffs. All of the sections in the book do an excellent job of explaining what an ideavirus actually is (I won't spoil it for you, you will actually have to read the book). There are numerous examples given, which help illustrate Godin's point.

The examples do feel dated, probably because I remember that stuff when I was kid and started to first use the Internet. However, they are still relevant because of how important viral marketing has become in recent years.

Overall, Unleashing The Ideavirus is a great book because it was written at the still somewhat early stages of the Internet. Seth Godin is extremely good at predicting things that will happen in the market, but he did make a couple of mistakes that no one could have foreseen at the time, and upon reading them, did make me chuckle a little bit. The first was the way he talked about Palm and what a small company did to promote its services with the Palm Pilot. We all know what happened to the Palm Pilot, and to Palm. But, at the time, both were huge. The second thing was about the Toyota Prius. Godin comments that when the Prius first came out, that it looked boring, and just like any other car. He didn't think that it would take off both because of the look of the car and because a hybrid electric vehicle was a radical idea at the time. We all know what happened here too. Toyota redesigned the Prius and it became fairly popular.

I would definitely reccomend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about viral marketing.

A couple of other things, not related to the book. I know that I haven't been blogging much recently. I've just been too busy and I've been sick too, and very tired. I never finished blogging about Advertising Week, but don't worry, I've got plenty of stuff just waiting to be blogged about from that great event. That will be coming this week. I just felt that I should post a book review since I hadn't done that in a while. Until next time. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @GalacticGirlx2 for even more insights into what it's like to be an advertising student.

Advertising Week 2011 Day 1

Wow, what an amazing day! I went to 4 Advertising Week events today, and saw a keynote speech given to my class by Rob Reilly, CCO of CP+B. I've posted some pictures, but you will notice that a couple of the events are missing and that's because my hands were shaking so my pictures turned out blurry.

The first event that I attended was a seminar called "Winning the Marketing War". It took place in the Reuters building and included a panel of CMOs from Time Magazine, FedEx, CVS Pharmacy, GE. They talked about a lot of things that were obvious to, at least from all my classes about target audiences at school. The panelists stressed the value tht PR can bring to a company and how important it is to the relationship with the customer. They also discussed how important analytics were, and how it is more efficient to consolidate your insight gathering tools when you are a large company. The most interesting part of the presentation was when the panelists were discussing what type of person they would look to hire for their marketing departments. The attributes that they would consider are:

• The person needs to be able to build an infrastrucure
• The person needs to be creative
• The person needs to analyze and be able to change things on the fly
• Curiosity
• Good listening skills

They would look for any one or more attributes at a time.
I had to leave this panel early so that I could get to another one, which was quite a distance away.

The next panel that I attended was called "Bravo's Got Reading Down To A Science". This seminar was all about neuromarketing. Neuromarketing is basically scientists hook you up to a brain scanning machine while you are watching, listening to, or reading advertisements and observe which types of the brain light up.

The Panel for "Bravo's Got Reading Down to a Science".

This was a really interesting seminar. Apparently, the first experiments in neuromarketing were on dead fish a few years ago. Now, many companies are using the technique to help give people a better brand experience. It is best used with integrated media because each media is different and serves a different purpose. I got to ask a question at this panel. I asked if consumers found this method creepy, and what companies were doing to ease their fears of it. The panel thought it was a great question. I got some good responses to it. One panelist said that people are scared at first when they see the equipment, but then they don't even realize that they have the stuff on, and in some cases, they fall asleep with the scanning equipment on. Another panelist said that people shouldn't be freaked out because what they are doing is trying to improve the user experience to make peoples' lives more enjoyable.

This panel was really great. Neuromarketing is the future of advertising and branding research.

The next panel that I attended was called "The Next 9 Years". It was hosted by Nick Law, CCO of R/GA and Barry Wacksman, Chief Growth Officer at R/GA. This seminar was all about how digital shop R/GA has changed its business model every 9 years as technology has changed. They talked a lot about how brands have grown, especially the model that they call Function Integration. Brands that have done this include Apple, Nike, Google, BMW, and Amazon.

Nick Law and Barry Wacksman talking about "The Next 9 Years".

For their next 9 years, R/Ga wants to become the World's first functionally integrated agency, meaning that they don't just do one thing and buy up a bunch of stuff. They want to be able to build brand experiences for their clients. They need a lot of different people on their team besides technologists. Nick Law put it perfectly when he said: "How diverse must we get to get good?" He was talking about how they want to provide the best brand experiences in the World, but that it can't be done unless they have a team full of different specialists who can bring something different to the table.

This panel was really interesting. I had to leave early, though, to get to the next seminar, which was quite a distance away.

The next seminar was probably my favourite. It was called "USA Today Presents: Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity". It was all about Droga5's campaign for Jay-Z's book: Decoded. This panel included David Droga, the founder of Droga5, Julie Grau from Random House Publishing, Eric Hadley, the General Manager of Worldwide Marketing for Microsoft and Bing, and John Meneilly, Jay-Z's manager. They spoke about how the campaign came together, and about how people worldwide got involved. What they did for the campaign was they put every page of Jay-Z's book outside somehow, on a billboard, on plates in a restaurant, in a swimming pool, etc. The places also had to be relevant to what was on the page in the book. Bing integrated a campaign and game for people to try to find where all these advertisements were, after a clue was given out on a social media site. It was an unbelievable and amazing campaign. I can see why it won the Cannes Lion Grand Prix.

The panel at the Cannes Lions event.

I got to ask a question in this panel. I asked everyone what the biggest challenge was for the campaign other than the budget, and if there were any major disagreements between parties because it was such a big undertaking. David Droga said that time was the biggest challenge. They had to crank out the ads pretty fast, and they could have done even more if they had a couple of months for each ad. Julie Grau said that people in her office would say to her: "I'll believe it when I see it," when she would explain what they were going to do for the campaign.

This panel was amazing. I really enjoyed it. It was extremely insightful, and it was an honour to be able to ask a question and have it answered by such giants in so many industries.

I was quickly off to my class's keynote talk by Rob Reilly. This was a really great talk. He answered many questions, from how to get into the business, to my question about writer's block. I can't say enough things about how amazing that was. Rob Reilly was a really nice guy and thanked everyone, and told everyone who asked a question that they asked a great question. It was a really enlightening talk and a lot of fun. I need to thank my professor, Anthony Kalamut, for organizing this event. It was amazing and super cool.

As you can see, this was a really long day, but a really fun one. I have a lot more on tap for tomorrow as well. I will keep you up to date on everything. So far, Advertising Week has been unbelievable. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @GalacticGirlx2 for even more insights. That's all for now.